System And Method For Support Wireless Device Access To  External Storage

ABSTRACT

To meet the needs for storing larger volume personal information for user of wireless device, it is desire to provide extra storage space to the wireless device such as for cell phone etc due to the limited storage space that the wireless device has. Instant application disclosed a system and method for the wireless device to efficiently and effectively use remotely located storage space provided by a server.

CROSS REFERENCE TO PRIOR APPLICATION

This invention is a continuation application of the U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 10/726,897 filed on Dec. 4, 2003, which relates toa provisional application number 60/401,238 of “Concurrent Web BasedMulti-task Support for Control Management System” filed on Aug. 6, 2002.This invention also relates to a provisional application No. 60/402,626of “IP Based Distributed Virtual SAN” filed on Aug. 12, 2002. Allmentioned prior applications are herein referenced incorporated byreference in their entirety for all purpose.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention focuses on how a wireless device can actually useexternal storage provided by a storage server.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Terminology:

The terminologies described in next few sections reflect the scope andare part of present invention.

The Internal Storage of a System:

The storage media such as hard disk drives, memory sticks, memory etc.is connected to a system directly through bus or a few inches of cable.Therefore, the storage media actually is a component of the system in anenclosure.

The External Storage of a System:

The external storage media is not a component of the system in a sameenclosure. Therefore, they have to be connected through a connectingmedium (e.g. a cable) such as Ethernet cable for IP based storage, Fiberchannel cable for fiber channel storage, or such as wireless medium andetc. The storage media of an external storage could be magnetic harddisk drives, solid state disk, optical storage drives, memory card, etc.and could be in any form such as Raid, which usually consists of a groupof hard disk drives.

The Storage Partition, its Volumes, and the Corresponding File System:

To effectively use storage system, each storage device usually needs tobe partitioned into small volumes. After the partition, each of thevolumes can be used to establish a file system on it. To simplify thediscussion herein, the term of the storage volume, its correspondingfile system, and the term of the partition of the storage device areoften used without differentiation.

CCDSVM:

It is an abbreviation for a central controlled distributed scalablevirtual machine system. The CCDSVM allows a control management stationto control a group of systems and provide distributed services to aclient system on the Internet, the Intranet, and an LAN environment.

ISP & ASP:

The ISP refers to Internet service provider and the ASP refers toapplication service provider.

FIGURES

FIG. 1 illustrates an embodiment of the instant application, the FIG. 1is the same as FIG. 1 of the previous application of the “Concurrent WebBased Multi-task Support for Control Management System” with anexception of replacing a console host with a wireless device.

FIG. 2 is the same as FIG. 1 of the above except that it shows a moredetailed storage system controlled by a server. In addition, multiplewireless devices are presented for access to the storage system.

FIG. 3 shows a scheme of a wireless device downloading contents from anISP/ASP or other web sites to an external storage allocated for thewireless device.

FIG. 4 similar to the FIG. 1 of the previous application of the “IPBased Distributed Virtual SAN” with exception that each IP storageserver provides a file system as external storage for each of thewireless devices instead of providing IP based virtual SAN service.Also, each host in said FIG. 1 actually is replaced by a wireless deviceof FIG. 4.

Unless specified, the programming languages and the protocols used byeach software modules of instant application, and the computing systemsused in this invention are assumed to be the same as described in thementioned previous patent applications.

In addition, in the drawing, like elements are designated by likereference numbers. Further, when a list of identical elements ispresent, only one element will be given the reference number.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Today the wireless users commonly face a problem of lack of storagecapacity configured on their wireless devices such as cell phone or PDA,which are usually limited to 256 MB for PDA and much less for cellphone. To effectively solve this problem and let users own multiplegigabytes (GB) of storage for their wireless devices as well as allowingthe users to use the GB storage for their multimedia applications, thestorage of a server can be used as the external storage for the wirelessdevices. This technology has been briefly introduced in the previousparent patent applications.

Now let us examine how the external storage can actually be used by thewireless devices. First, let each server unit (e.g. the server 3 of theFIG. 2) partitions its storage system into volume and each of thevolumes will have multiple GB in size. Therefore, each user of thewireless devices can be exclusively assigned and access a specificstorage volume. For example, if we need to provide each user a 4 GBstorage space, then a 160 GB disk drive can support 40 users. Therefore,a 4096 GB storage system on the server unit can support a total of 1024wireless devices for users. Further, any data on the wireless device canbe transmitted to an assigned storage volume. In addition, the user ofthe wireless device also can download the multimedia data from an ISP orASP to the assigned storage volume of a designated server unit throughout-band approach shown in FIG. 3. Finally, the user can use aweb-browser, which has a functionality of invoking embedded video ormusic, to enjoy his/her stored multimedia contents.

These and other futures, aspects and advantages of the present inventionwill become understood with reference to the following description,appended claims, and accompanying figures.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Referring now to FIG. 1, it demonstrates a configuration comprising anetwork connecting a wireless device and a server.

In the FIG. 1, Net (2) represents a communication link, which may becombined with wireless and wired connection media and guarantee that thecommunication packets can be sent/received between the wireless deviceand the server. It is also assumed that the net (2) representing ancommunication infrastructure is built up in such way that a user of awireless device can access and browse any web-site on the Internet, theIntranet, or a local area network (LAN).

In FIG. 1, the console support software (5) on the server (3) can beconfigured to support web-based multi-tasks for the user of the wirelessdevice (1) via a web browser 8. Further, the user of the wireless deviceis able to perform creating structured layered files directories orfolders, and perform data management operations, such as delete, move,copy, rename for data files or folders/directories and etc. on anassigned storage volume associated with the server (3).

In addition, the other software modules (9) of the wireless device (1)is configured to send data to or receive data from the other servicemodules (7) running on the server (3) via communication link (2) througha suitable IP or non-IP based protocol. The data being sent cold be adigital photo picture, a message and etc.

Also, the console supporting software (5) of the server (3) and theother software modules (9) of the wireless device (1) can be implementedwith any suitable languages such as C, C++, Java, etc. depending on theimplementation.

Besides, the web-browser (8) of the wireless device (1) can beimplemented any suitable software. The web browser is configured tocommunication with web server software (4) on the server (3) with anyother web server through the HTTP protocol.

On the other hand, FIG. 2 has demonstrated that the storage system 10 ofa server 3 can be allocated to multiple wireless devices.

First, the storage system (10) of the server (3) can be partitioned intomultiple storage volumes (11) by administration staff through aweb-console (13) of a console host (12).

Second, the storage system (10) of the server (3) can be partitioned insuch way that each of the wireless devices can be allocated with astorage volume having a desired size, therefore, the server 3 cansupport maximum numbers of the wireless devices.

In addition, the storage connection media could be any kind of cables,such as SCSI cable, IP cable, Fiber cable etc. or could be wirelesscommunication media. The storage system itself could be various types.

Finally, the storage system 10 can be accessed by each of the wirelessdevices through IP or non-IP based network and protocols.

FIG. 3 has demonstrated that a user from a web-browser (8) on a wirelessdevice (1) can download data from a known web-site (15) to his/herallocated external storage (10) on the server (3). The dash-lined path(a) represents a communication channel between the wireless device (1)and a remote downloading web-site (15) that provides downloadingcontents. The dash-lined path (b) represents a communication channelbetween the wireless devices (1) and the storage server (3). Thedash-lined path (c) represents a communication channel between theserver 3 and the remote web-server (15).

THE DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The Use of the External Storage by the Wireless Device:

The FIG. 2 shows a simplified diagram of the wireless devices (1) usingthe external storage system (10) of the server (3) for effectivelyresolving the storage limitation problem for the wireless devices (1).

Partition Storage Volumes (FIG. 2)

With this invention, the entire storage (10) on the server (3) needs tobe partitioned into suitable size of volumes (11) such as 4 GB for eachvolume. This will allow the server 3 to serve maximum number of thewireless devices (1). With the web console support software (5) of theserver (3), tasks of partitioning the storage system 10 can be donethrough a web-console (13) on a console host (12) by an administrativestaff.

In order to support storage partitioning, first the console supportsoftware (5) of the server (3) must send storage information of theserver (3) to the web-console (13) of the console host (12). The storageinformation includes each storage device's name and total size etc.Second, based on the received storage information the administrationstaff on the console host (12) can use a web-console (13) to fill out arequest and send the request for storage partition information to theconsole support software (5) of the server (3). The storage partitioninformation includes the number of the partitions (volumes) and the sizeof each partition (volume). Third, upon receiving the request of storagepartition information from the web-console (13 of FIG. 2) of the consolehost (12), the console support software (5) of the server (3) performsthe actual storage partition to divide the entire storage into multiplesmall volumes. Finally, for each small storage volume, a correspondingfile system could be built up.

Assign Storage Volumes (FIG. 2):

Each of the storage volumes together with its corresponding file system(11) on the storage system (10) of the server (3) needs to beexclusively allocated and exported to a specific wireless device (1) bythe console support software (5) of the server (3).

Data and Storage Volume Management (FIG. 2)

With the support of the console support software modules (5) of theserver (3), the user of the wireless device (1) can via the web-browser8 of FIG. 2 setup folder/directory structure on the file system ofhis/her assigned external storage volume (11). In addition, the user ofthe wireless device (1) can via the web-browser 8 of FIG. 2 perform alldata management operations such as delete, copy, move, rename etc. forfile system.

In order to support such data management on the external storage (10)allocated to the wireless device (1 of FIG. 2) via the web-browser 8 ofFIG. 2, first the console support software modules (5) of the server (3)must communicate with the web-browser (8) of the wireless device (1).Therefore, the user from the web-browser (8) of the wireless device (1)can choose desired data management operations and send operationinformation to the console support software modules (5) of the server(3). The mentioned operations include establishing folder/directory,copying, moving, or reaming data file etc. Second, upon receiving thedata management operation, the console support software modules (5) ofthe server (3) actually processes/executes these requested operationsfor the assigned file system of an allocated storage volume (11) on theserver (3).

Store Data from Wireless Device into External Storage (FIG. 2)

To store the data such as digital photo pictures or messages into thefile system on the allocated storage (10) of the server (3), the othersoftware modules (9) of the wireless device (1) need to send these datato the other service modules (7) of the server (3) via communicationlink between them. Upon receiving the data, the other service modules(7) of the server (3) write these data to the file system of theallocated storage volume (11) for the wireless device 1. The protocolused between these two communication entities could be either IP ornon-IP based protocol.

Download Data from a Remote Web Server Site into Allocated StorageVolume

Now, referring to FIG. 3, If a user of the wireless device (1) wants todownload a data from a remote web server (15) into the allocated filesystem (11) of the allocated storage volume (11) on the server (3), thefollowing steps are required:

1) The user of the wireless device (1) via a web-browser (8) access to aremote downloading web server site (15) to obtain information for thedownloading via path (a) of FIG. 3. For example, the user access to aweb-page which contains the data name for the downloading.

2) The other software modules (9) of the wireless device (1) obtain thedownloading information, which becomes available in the cached web-pageson the wireless device (1) after the web-browser (8) access to the website (15).

3) The other software modules (9) of the wireless device (1) send theobtained downloading information to other service modules (7) of thestorage server (3) via path (b) of FIG. 3.

4) Upon receiving the downloading information from the wireless device(1), the other service module (7) of the storage server (3) sends a webdownload request to the web-site (15) via path (c) of FIG. 3 andreceives the downloading data streams from the web server of theweb-site (15).

5) Upon receiving downloading data streams, the other service modules(7) of the storage server (3) write the data streams into the allocatedfile system (11) on the server (3) for the wireless device (1).

Retrieve Data from Allocated Storage for the Wireless Device

1) If a web-browser (8) on a wireless device 1 has embedded video ormusic functionality, a user of the wireless device (1) can use thebrowser to retrieve and play multimedia data file such as video or musicstored in the allocated storage volume (10) located on the server (3).

2) If there is a needs, the other software module (9) of the wirelessdevice (1) also can retrieve data file from the allocated file system ofthe allocated storage volume (11) on the server (3).

Support External Storage for a Large Number of the Wireless Devices

If there is a need to provide each user a 2 GB of storage space, then a160 GB disk drive can support 80 users. A 4096 GB (4 Tera Bytes) storagesystem on the server unit can support 2024 user. Each of the serverunits only can efficiently support a limited size of the storage system.In order to support a large number of the wireless devices, such as for500,000 wireless devices, a larger number of the servers is required, inthis case 250 servers is required. In order to let a larger number ofthe servers to effectively support the larger number of the wirelessdevices, an infrastructure like CCDSVM is desirable, which has beendescribed in previous patent applications. With the CCDSVM the controlmanagement station can control larger number of storage servers toprovide external storage for a huge number of the wireless devices.

1-10. (canceled)
 11. A server providing storage space to wirelessdevice, the server comprising: at least one storage device configuredwith at least one storage space; and a storage medium comprising programcode that, when executed by the server, causes the server to: allocatethe storage space of a predefined capacity to be accessible to thewireless device, create a folder structure residing in the storagespace; establish a link for the wireless device access to the folderstructure in the storage space; and update the folder structure whenevera user from the wireless device to performs an operation to the folderstructure in the storage space.
 12. The server as recited in claim 11,wherein the updating of the folder structure comprises: updating thefolder structure in response to a request, received from the wirelessdevice, for creating a folder in the folder structure.
 13. The server asrecited in claim 12, wherein the updating of the folder structurecomprises: updating the folder structure in response to a request,received from the wireless device, for access to the folder in thefolder structure for storing data therein or retrieving data therefrom,wherein the data is a file or a message.
 14. The server as recited inclaim 13, wherein the updating of the folder structure comprises:updating the folder structure in response to a request, received fromthe wireless device, for deleting or moving or copying or renaming afile or a folder being stored in the folder structure.
 15. The server asrecited in claim 12, wherein the updating of the folder structurecomprises: updating the folder structure in response to a request,received from the wireless device for storing a file to be downloadedfrom a remote web server directly into the storage space instead ofdownloading the file into the wireless device itself.
 16. The server asrecited in claim 12, wherein the folder structure is created withmultiple folders on a file system configured in the storage spaceaccessible to the wireless devices.
 17. The server as recited in claim12, wherein the user of the wireless device is allowed via a web browserexecuted thereof to perform said operation to the folder structure inthe storage space.
 18. The server as recited in claim 12, wherein thelink includes wireless communication media.
 19. A method for a wirelessdevice downloading file comprising: obtaining, by the wireless device,download information for a file from a remote web server; transmittingthe download information cached in the wireless device to a storageserver; and causing the storage server in accordance with thedownloading information to download the file from the remote web serverdirectly into a storage space configured in the storage server.
 20. Themethod as recited in claim 19, wherein the remote web server isaccessible through the world wide web and comprises at least onedownloadable file.
 21. The method as recited in claim 19, wherein thestorage space is configured in a storage device residing in the storageserver and comprises a file system.
 22. The method as recited in claim19, wherein the wireless device is operable to allow a user via a webbrowser executed thereof to request download a file from a remote webserver into the storage space directly instead of downloading the fileinto the wireless device itself.
 23. The method as recited in claim 19,wherein the wireless device is configured via a link access to thestorage space residing in the storage server.
 24. A system supportingwireless device downloading file, the system comprising: at least onestorage server and one wireless device, the storage server configuredwith at least one storage space of a predefined capacity to allow thewireless device via a link remotely access to the storage space; whereinthe wireless device is configured to allow a user via a web browserexecuted thereof to download a file from a remote web server directlyinto the allocated storage space in the storage server instead ofdownloading the file into the wireless device itself.
 25. The system asrecited in the claim 24, wherein said downloading a file from a remoteweb server comprises: obtaining, by the wireless device, downloadinformation for the file from the remote web server; transmitting thedownload information cached in the wireless device to the storageserver; and causing the storage server in accordance with thedownloading information to download the file from the remote web serverdirectly into the storage space allocated to the wireless device. 26.The system as recited in claim 24, wherein the wireless device has afunction of making or receiving a phone call.
 27. The system as recitedin claim 24, wherein the storage space is configured in a storage deviceresiding in the storage server and comprises a file system.
 28. Thesystem as recited in claim 24, wherein the remote web server isaccessible through the world wide web and comprises at least onedownloadable file.
 29. The system as recited in claim 24, wherein thelink includes wireless communication media.